It also separated the Wisconsin congressman from all of the Republicans in Iowa’s congressional delegation. Sen. Chuck Grassley, Rep. Steve King and even Rep. Tom Latham — a personal friend of Speaker John Boehner’s – rejected the tax package.

The measure extended the Bush-era income tax cuts for households making less than $450,000 a year. It allowed tax rates to rise for higher-income taxpayers.

South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint skipped the vote. He had said it was too important an issue for a lame-duck Congress, according to McClatchy Newspapers. Ducking the vote may make some voters cry fowl, as in chicken.

Majority Whip Eric Cantor broke with most of the House leadership to oppose the bill. If he decides to run, his vote will give him a sharp contrast with Ryan.

Ryan’s vote was a surprise, considering that he was one of the few things about the Mitt Romney campaign that inspired enthusiasm among some Iowa conservatives. At times during the 2012 campaign, it seemed Ryan was tiptoeing along the line between accepting Romney’s positions on issues like abortion and reserving his own, harder-line views.

Doug Gross, an Iowa Republican who chaired Romney’s 2008 campaign in Iowa, told the Associated Press after the vote: “It strikes me that Ryan is thinking he wants to be the establishment candidate.”

The establishment path may be the surest to the GOP nomination, based on the past few cycles, but it’s not the smoothest road to a win in the Iowa caucuses.

It was telling to see the social media traffic from Iowa conservative and tea-party Republicans about the fiscal cliff vote. There were lots of kudos for King, Grassley and Latham for voting against the fiscal cliff. The response to Boehner’s re-election as speaker was a different story, however, with King’s vote in favor a particular target.

“I can think of a few reasons why Steve King would vote for John Boehner for speaker, but none of them are good,” conservative radio personality Steve Deace wrote on Twitter. I didn’t see similar criticism of Latham — perhaps his personal friendship with Boehner made his vote a given.

King on Thursday said it would have been a “different equation” if Boehner had faced a credible challenger for the job.

“But that wasn’t the equation today,” he said in an interview with WHO Radio’s Simon Conway. He said there’s a battle ahead and Republicans “need to be more unified.”

Harkin’s vote made Iowa the only state with two senators on the “no” side. It’s an odd twist, considering the philosophical gulf that exists between Harkin and Grassley.

Harkin has been a consistent critic of the efforts to strike a grand bargain on the fiscal cliff before the new year. He said it would be better to let the new Congress hash out tax and budget issues. Harkin is up for re-election in 2014.

Voters in Iowa and around the country will judge the New Year’s tax vote in the context of what happens with the fiscal cliffs that are still looming: the debt ceiling, sequestration and the continuing budget resolution.

These individual votes will look very different depending on whether 2013 brings government shutdowns and default or clear movement toward a balanced budget.